


He Always Comes Around Again

by deliverusfromsburb



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, I don't make a habit of writing for this fandom, but Current Events inspired me, but instead we must manage on our own, if only we had our own Sam Vimes to sort stuff out, zombie!Sam Vimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 16:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliverusfromsburb/pseuds/deliverusfromsburb
Summary: The death of His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, and Blackboard Monitor Commander Sir Samuel Vimes rocks Ankh-Morpork. It’s like one of the elephants supporting the world has stumbled, sending the whole disc sideways.  It is the end of an era, say Guild leaders with varying levels of regret or relief.  The city will never see another like him.It causes considerable consternation when he shows up for work the next day.





	He Always Comes Around Again

**Author's Note:**

> I know there are a lot of 'Vimes dies and becomes the god of coppers' concepts, but I always felt he wouldn't hold with that kind of thing. Crawling out of his grave every few decades to go 'aND ANOTHER THING' is much more human.

The death of His Grace, The Duke of Ankh, and Blackboard Monitor Commander Sir Samuel Vimes rocks Ankh-Morpork. It’s like one of the elephants supporting the world has stumbled, sending the whole disc sideways.  It is the end of an era, say Guild leaders with varying levels of regret or relief.  The city will never see another like him.  

It causes considerable consternation when he shows up for work the next day.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he growls at a new recruit who picked the wrong day to start.  “Haven’t you ever seen a zombie before?  I have some paperwork I didn’t get to, and I’m not going to leave a job undone.”

“Well done, sir,” says Reg. “I’m glad you could join us. You’re demonstrating superb joint mobility, if I may say so.”

“I’m not planning on making a habit of it,” he says, and sits down heavily behind his desk.

When he’s done with his paperwork, has sorted out the new pay roster, and has pensively smoked one last cigar, he stumps back to the Small Gods cemetery, climbs back into his grave, and slams the lid of the coffin shut.  “Do you think he’ll be back?” asks Cheri.

“I would suggest,” says Commander Carrot diplomatically, “that you tell the gravediggers not to bother tamping the earth down too hard.”

Vimes is given a special ranking just in case a reappearance throws off the entire chain of command. Citizens visit his grave to gawk, or to ask for help, or to whisper tips to the wind that they don’t dare share with a living officer.  Carrot sets a task force to gathering the slips of paper people leave on the grave, and a few of their smaller operatives dig tiny foxholes nearby to listen.  Both practices stick, even when commanders switch over, and the legend of Commander Vimes going back on duty after his own funeral becomes a bit of watchman mythology. He really was larger than life, people say, so of course people would want to memorialize that with tales. But look, that grave is quiet. Nothing’s coming up.

Then a patrician suggests establishing their own private branch of the guard, one that answers to only them and isn't bound by regular laws.  It’s necessary, they argue.  Sometimes we have to make exceptions.

The next day, Vimes is standing at attention in the Oblong Office, an old recruit at his side.  If anything, death has made his posture even stiffer. “As watch commander, I must register my strong disapproval toward the creation of a private guard,” he says.

The patrician taps their fingers on the desk.  “I pay the salary of the watch commander,” they say. “I don’t believe she looks like you.”

“He has a special dispensation,” says Detritus proudly.  “Commander uh-mare-it-us.  Dunno what that means exactly, but it sounds important.”

“Watchmen don’t serve you,” Vimes says.  That’s the thing about zombies; they are implacable.  He would keep saying his piece if you ran a sword through him.  In that sense, say many of those who knew him, he hasn’t changed much.  “They serve the law, and the law doesn’t live in the Oblong Office.”

Do they serve the law, or do they serve you?  the patrician wonders.  For someone who can’t abide kings, the man amassed a group of loyal subjects. Still, the patrician is not a fool. “Understood,” they say smoothly.  “I only suggested these measures because of some recent unrest.  Might you have some advice on an alternate resolution?”

On the walk back to the cemetery, Detritus clears his throat.  “What’s it like it, being dead, sir?”  

Vimes thinks about this for some time, digging a beetle out of his ear.  Detritus waits for the secrets of the universe to be revealed.

“Not much to do,” Vimes says.

The last patrician was not a fool, but the next one is.  He’s not interested in some long dead thieftaker telling him what to do.  He’s just a man, a dead man, and the patrician does not make a habit of listening to the dead.  There are ways of dealing with the undead too.  The wizards, however, prove uncooperative.

“Explain to me again why you can’t do anything about one sporadic zombie,” he says through gritted teeth.  “Is it quantum?”

“Oh no,” says the archchancellor breezily.  “We mastered quantum a long time ago. Unfortunately, this situation is a lot simpler than that.”

“A lot  _simpler_?”  

“The simplest problems are often the hardest,” the archchancellor says, as if lecturing a student.  “You have heard of old Stoneface, haven’t you?”

“Killed a king, didn’t he?”

“That was the first one. This one did a lot more, and he didn’t need an ax to do it.  They say he had some connection to a dwarven demon of vengeance, for starters.  We don’t like to meddle in that kind of thing.  We’re very multicultural here these days, you know, and that wouldn’t be culturally sensitive.”

“So your entire university of wizards is overpowered by one heathen superstition?”

The archchancellor sighs. The students are already taking bets on how long this one will last.  It wouldn’t be professional to join them, but he is beginning to realize his contribution to the faculty pool was much too optimistic.  “Pardon my language, but what we’re dealing with here is pure damn cussedness.  That’s what powers most zombies, you know.  They just don’t give a damn that they’re dead.  It doesn’t factor into their view of the universe.  And if there was ever one for being stubborn, it was this man.  Unseen University will defy the workings of the universe, or even struggle with gods.  We’re proud of that. But human nature is another force altogether.  We can put all sorts of mystical runes on that coffin for you, but they’re not going to do anything versus a good old common boot kicking its way through them.”

“Expect your taxes to go up this year,” the patrician says shortly, and waves him away.  “I see I will have to handle this myself.”

It's outrageous, he thinks.  The city is far too set in its ways.  He is a political appointee, brought in from Genua by some guilds angling for a better seat at the table, but clearly this place needs straightening out.  This man they worship is positively medieval.  He’s seen pictures in the city archives, where he’d gone to brush up on his history.  The building was ice cold, to facilitate the storage of the records and the operation of the archivist’s silicon brain. She was a troll who rattled off long strings of numbers and letters while an imp fluttered overhead to retrieve the documents requested. “You locals make a lot of this man,” he’d said.  “Some say he arrested a dragon.”

“Common misconception,” she said, and he nodded, satisfied.  His complacency vanished when she added, “That was Lance-Corporal Ironfoundersson, at the time.  Although if we judge by weights, Commander Vimes still takes the prize with two armies.”

“Two armies?” he repeated.

“It’s in the records for the Klatch altercation. We took oral histories from Captain Dorfl; he’s still around if you’d like to verify.”

“Why didn’t they kill him?”

She blinked at him like the slow collision of continents.  “Don’t think it ever crossed their mind.”

He snatched the files he’d been looking for off the table between them.  “It would have crossed  _mine_.”

It takes time to find a craftsman who will make the chains, or workers willing to put them on.  He has to solicit help from people who haven’t been in the city for very long and don’t know its stories.  A crowd gathers to watch the process.  Unlike most Ankh-Morpork gatherings, it’s silent.  If he had been a wiser man, he would have worried about that.

Vimes doesn’t bother getting up for that one.  Sometimes a symbol is all you need.

The city learns. Patricians give state of the city addresses at the Small Gods cemetery, even when they’ve mostly forgotten why. The watch keeps itself in at least the grubby gray areas of the law.  At the eulogy, Carrot, speaking from the heart and some poorly punctuated notecards, said that the commander would live on in everyone.  This is not what he meant, but it is what works. People are afraid that the old commander will show up, but they are also afraid that he won’t.  Maybe one day he won’t rise up, and they’ll have to make sure justice is done on their own.  Might as well get some practice in.

Occasionally, though, someone does something that they really shouldn’t.

HEADING BACK AGAIN, SIR SAMUEL?  Death asks, as the lone soul begins its trudge across the vast black desert.  He nods, satisfied, as the response winds its way back to him over the wastes.

“Some bastards never learn.”


End file.
